The Goddess of Borders

by Yash Jaiswal (India)

I didn't expect to find India

“The moment I fired, blood streamed out his temple and down into the sand. He was dead as a rock”, said the old priest, who served the Indian Army in the 1965 war against Pakistan. “That was the last soldier we killed. We had won the war because Tanot Mata had her blessings on us that day.” The desert felt cold beneath my naked feet, the same desert that once bore witness to the bloodiest war fought between the two countries. It has seen calmness ever since. “Tanot Mata is our saviour. This Goddess is our protector at the border, she has always saved us”, said the priest. The temple of Tanot Mata is a skip away from the border that separates the two rival countries. A small saffron flag fluttered over the temple in the unflinching cold winds of the desert. The Indian Tricolour stood in company with it. The calmness of the desert was broken when loud thuds of drums and crashing of cymbals escaped from the temple, in perfect harmony with the hymns that the voices sang. The evening Aarti of Tanot Mata had begun. The priest and I had shared the same army-jeep from Jaisalmer to arrive at Tanot Mata’s temple. His was a daily routine. After the Aarti ended, the priest, bathed in the fragrance of sandalwood, joined me outside. Ash smeared across his forehead, his face glowed in the light of a burning Diya that he held. We sat on a wall, overlooking the naked dunes that were slowly losing their golden shimmer to the setting sun. “How do soldiers come to believe in God?” I asked him. After all the bloody wars, massacres, and memories of the dead comrades, I wondered if soldiers were left with any will to pray to their God. “Sometimes, when there are bullets flying around”, said the priest, “and bombs exploding near you, and you see your comrades fall to death one-by-one, all you await is magic to happen. An intervention from a power that is beyond you. Beyond your enemy. Wars make you devotees.” The three-hour ride in the jeep from Jaisalmer was fuelled by stories of that bloody war of 1965. The four soldiers, who sat with me in the back of the jeep, guns slung over their shoulders, told me the legend of how Tanot Mata protected a battalion fighting a massive infiltration in 1965. “We had lost all our frontier check-posts. The Pakistani army was closing in fast. All hopes were lost. But the battalion stuck to their belief in Tanot Mata. They took shelter in her temple”, the soldier said. “Three thousand bombs were dropped over the course of two nights,” said the other soldier. “But none of the bombs that fell on the temple exploded. Not a single one of them. All the bombs are on display in the temple for everyone to see. You will see them when you reach.” “For two successive nights, Tanot Mata protected us, until help arrived from Jaisalmer - the nearest army-base. We pray to her every day. It’s the only temple where soldiers perform the Aarti, instead of the priests.” To the atheist that I was, hearing these legends of Tanot Mata and seeing their unbending belief in the Goddess, I felt small and insignificant sitting with them. Everyone, from the drummer to the cymbalist, from the priest who sang the aarti, to the one who circled the flaming Diyas in front of the diety; everyone there was a soldier but me, praying to their Goddess, their protectress in this vast open desert, that at anytime, could explode into a battlefield. The night had now fallen. The priest cupped his palm down over the flame and then touched my head. The blessing now passed, he got up and began to leave. “Pandit Ji”, I said, stopping him. “I have seen bad times as well. Sometimes, I have cried all night, losing all hope, thinking that it could not get any worse than this. And yet I have never found my guiding-light, a super-power I can pray to. My faith has always evaded me.” “Maybe because”, he said, “you have not fought a war yet.”